Tony Iantosca reads for Broken Bells Reading Series

Tony Iantosca (MFA 2012) joins the line up for the Broken Bells reading series taking place on November 18th, 2018, at BERG'N (899 Bergen St in Brooklyn) from 7-9pm.

Members of the Broken Bells audience will be offered exclusive an exclusive happy hour deal.

Tony will join readers Adam Giannelli, Cassie Pruyn, and Asiya Wadud. Jess Feldman curated this month of the reading series, co-curated by MFA Program Advisor, Jake Matkov, and Hannah Ingram.

More details and RSVP here: the Facebook event.

Cynthia Cruz workshop POSTPONED

***THIS EVENT HAS BEEN POSTPONED FOR SPRING 2019! PLEASE STAY TUNED FOR MORE DETAILS AT A LATER DATE***

Join us for a one day workshop with Cynthia Cruz! LIU alum can attend for free. Outside participants welcome, too! Please see the flier for more details...

Undergraduate Courses: Spring 2019

Graduate Courses: Spring 2019

Sigrid Nunez, National Book Award finalist!

Sigrid Nunez, Distinguished Visiting Writer in the Creative Writing MFA program (2015), was announced as one of five finalists for the National Book Award in Fiction. Her novel, The Friend, released earlier this year, has received rave reviews. The New York Times Book Review writes, "Nunez’s prose itself comforts us. Her confident and direct style uplifts—the music in her sentences, her deep and varied intelligence."

The Friend is "[a] moving story of love, friendship, grief, healing, and the magical bond between a woman and her dog."

Nunez joins other finalists Jamel Brinkley, Lauren Groff, Brandon Hobson, and Rebecca Makkai. You can read the full list of finalists for all categories on BuzzFeed Books.

New chapbook from Lisa Rogal + NYC Reading

Lisa Rogal (MFA 2013) has a new chapbook out by Ugly Duckling Presse (where MFA 2014 graduate, Daniel Owen currently works as editor and publicity director) this month! Feed Me Weird Things is described as being "about the importance of the unimportant: the quotidian, the overlooked, the natural world, the pain or beauty of longing, the persistence of uncertainty. With a voice at once irreverent and sincere, the poems enact meaning through attentiveness, ambiguity, and humor."

Karen Weiser writes of the chapbook: "Lisa Rogal’s Feed Me Weird Things is a pleasurable existential crisis. I mean, she asks what is the place of pleasure in the cultural mess we are in, which robs us of (almost) every last bit of possible gratification, or makes pleasure an ominous, dumb thing."

You can read more about the chapbook and buy it from Ugly Duckling Presse.

Lisa will be visiting NYC to give a reading on Thursday October 25th at Greenlight Bookstore (PLG location). You can find more details on UDP or Greenlight Bookstore.

Rosemary Mayer, TEMPORARY MONUMENTS

Long time English department adjunct, Rosemary Mayer (1943-2014), has a posthumous publication out from Soberscove Press. Temporary Monuments: Work By Rosemary Mayer, 1977-1982 "is the first comprehensive presentation of this body of work and includes Mayer’s documentation of these impermanent artworks. Mayer created photographs, writings, artists’ books, and drawings that expand the realm of these projects and reflect her interest in exploring ideas through a variety of media."

You can order the book from the press.

Also, check out a great review on Hyperallergic.

Jacob Matkov: Broken Bells Reading Series

Jacob Matkov (MFA Program Advisor) curates a new event for the Broken Bells reading series taking place on September 9th, 2018, at Local 61 (61 Bergen St in Brooklyn) from 7-9pm.

He will introduce readers Cathy Linh Che, Cynthia Cruz, Ricardo Alberto Maldonado, and Jayson P. Smith.

Find more information on the Facebook event page!

Mark Dow: Plain Talk Rising

Former LIU adjunct faculty member and past Downtown Brooklyn contributor Mark Dow has self-published a collection of poems titled Plain Talk Rising, which is available for purchase here. If you would like to request a review copy, please email mdow@igc.org

Congratulations, Mark!

See below for more information:

"Mark Dow's Plain Talk Rising hovers above poetry and prose. It also transmutes one into the other, poetry into prose, and then back again, like an alchemist let loose in a writing workshop that may set alight our era of MFA's for good. 'The past, alight, hovers nearby with open eyes.' You will simply have to find your seat in the dark theater without flashlight or usher. Once seated, you will begin to identify with the author seated at his desk, dropping down the words toward the white landing area below. 'Oh and another thing.' (He is talking to you). The words stay there, falling into place when you have closed this unforgettable book, funny and wise."
            --David Rosenberg, author of A Literary Bible and co-author (with Harold Bloom) of The Book of J  

"A truly remarkable and challenging book."
            --Laurence Lieberman, author of The Creole Mephistopheles and Beyond the Muse of Memory: Essays on Contemporary American Poets

Mark Dow's Plain Talk Rising, before being "self-published," was a finalist in the Colorado Prize, New Issues, and Yale Series competitions (selected by Donald Revell, Linda Gregerson, and W.S. Merwin, respectively). It was also a semi-finalist for the St. Lawrence Book Award from Black Lawrence Press.

Dow's poems and nonfiction have appeared in Agni, Alaska Quarterly Review, Boston Review, Caribbean Review of Books, Chicago Review, Conjunctions, Drunken Boat, Fascicle, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Paris Review, PN Review, SLAM! Wrestling, Southern Review, Threepenny Review, and Word for/Word, among many others. His e-chapbook "Feedback" and Other Conversation Poems(2015) is at Mudlark: An Electronic Journal of Poetry & Poetics.

Dow is also author of American Gulag: Inside U.S. Immigration Prisons (California, 2004) and co-editor of Machinery of Death: The Reality of America's Death Penalty Regime (Routledge, 2002).

New publication & reading event from Professor Gary Racz

Professor Gary Racz of the Department of English, Philosophy and Languages has work in the new issue of Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas “Nuevísimos: New Spanish American Writing” (no. 96, June 2018).

He will participate in the issue launch on Tuesday, October 2, 2018, from 5:00-8:00 p.m, reading his translations!

The event will take place at The City College of New York in the Faculty Dining Room, North Academic Center, 3rd floor. 160 Convent Avenue (@138th Street)

Please send your RSVP to either dshapiro@ccny.cuny.edu or rmartinez@ccny.cuny.edu

You will find more details on the attached flier.